Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz

Sex and Rage Reviews

• 
  sawah

  sex & rage r my two favourite emotions so u can imagine my rage when neither of them made an appearance
• 
  Caitlin

  not enough sex and not enough rage!!!!!!
• 
  Shawn McComb

  Eve is just too good at what she does
• 
  emma

  this book rules because it's about this perfect girl who is extremely beautiful and interesting and smart and hot and universally adored and it's also autobiographical.
  
  goals, really.
  
  this is actually not eve's finest - normally she's funny enough that you can forgive her for knowing how charming and beautiful she is, but the balance is off here - and the writing feels weaker than her usual.
  
  but you've got to hand it to her on the pride front. and the title.
  
  bottom line: even the worst eve is still not that bad. but it's not that good either.
  
  --------------
  tbr review
  
  what more could you need
• 
  Rachel Pollock

  I really, really wanted to like this book. It came so highly recommended. However, by modern standards it reads like some stream of consciousness fever dream, like it's poorly edited. She has a beautiful authorial voice, but my god is it tedious to read.
• 
  Jennifer Welsh

  3.5
  
  “Max’s laugh was like a dragnet; it picked up every living laugh within the vicinity and shined a light on it, intensified it, pitched it higher. It was a dare—he dared you not to laugh with him. He dared you to despair. He dared you to insist that there was no silver lining, that the heart didn’t grow fonder by absence. He dared you to believe you were going to die—when you at that moment knew, just as he did, that you were immortal, you were among the gods.”
  
  “He smelled like a birthday party for small children, like vanilla, crêpe paper, soap, starch, and warm steam and cigarettes.”
  
  “The white flowers threw Max’s elegant silhouette into a sort of bas-relief, like Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in Florence, golden.”
  
  “She had always presumed that once people got to be twenty-three, they were Too Old, “'…yet she was not old enough to content herself with brooding over the past like Marcel Proust, whose book she was reading on the plane, and who obviously had nothing more pressing to do than to regard the years as a museum filled with beautiful reproductions of lost jealousy and bygone fashion.”
  
  “Did I tell you about this graffiti I saw in the men’s room at the Knife and Fork? Someone printed: ‘I’m ten inches long and three inches wide. Interested?’ and wrote his phone number down. And then, in pencil underneath, someone else said, ‘Fascinated. How big’s your cock?’”
• 
  Natalie R

  I didn't get it. I'm not even sure if there was something to get. I HATED jacaranda. In my opinion she was so problematic and self absorbed when she was a walking disaster. The self pity was REAL. She blamed everyone for her problems and kept manipulating Shelby for no reason at all. Also, her obsession with Max was pathetic and made zero sense. Also, where was the plot? I was waiting for there to be some sort of climax and it never happened. I read in a review that it was supposed to be about her getting revenge on Max for messing her up, but the revenge never happened? The story was just all over the place as though it wasn't planned, nor executed, very well. I also read somewhere that this was meant to be a loose memoir? If that's true, I would have hated Babitz as a person. Truly.
• 
  che

  in hindsight, maybe i hated this because unlike jacaranda (aka babitz), i am not a hot nepotism girl who gets employed just for being a hot nepotism girl. but i stand by my opinion—this is what happens when we make the embodiments of watching paint dry into influencers. still not sure if the writing was lovely, or if it just seemed so because it was a stream of consciousness.
• 
  Joel Curry

  Don’t be fooled by gays & martinis
• 
  Linda Robinson

  Sparkling decadence. Faux naïf and picaresque are two new words I learned reading reviews of Babitz's work and life during the time this collection of scenes was written. A memoir/essay/fiction with the names only slightly changed to include the participants in this hedonistic romp from L.A. to N.Y. and back again. Paris Review compared Babitz to Lispector, both in the obsession with the space between words and meaning, and then again that both women were badly burned; Babitz from the hot ash of a cigar she was smoking that fell in her lap. The book I read had entertained a previous reader who began with pencil parentheses sparsely; soon crowding the page. Less than a third through, the reader stopped annotating. You've experienced the delight of language in the hands of a master writer, and thought about taking notes, framing the sentence in pretty punctuation. Open this book anywhere, and you'll find one or two or three of the best sentences you've read, nestled in a paragraph you'll read twice. The word choices describe people who are mesmerizing and who you are glad you never met when you were young and indestructible.
• 
  Katy O.

  😍THIS BOOK ❤️ I'm thanking Belletrist from the bottom of my heart for choosing the re-release of this 1979 classic as their July book club pick - I absolutely LOVE THIS BOOK. And I can't write a review of it since it's older than I am (just barely!) and everything I say will be redundant. I will say that there is almost NO SEX (or rage!) though, and it completely defied all of my expectations. This book is whip-smart and lush and I wanted to highlight 90% of it. It's sweet and terse and hopeful and real and most of all, timeless. If I weren't done having kids, my next baby girl would 100% be named Jacaranda. If you haven't read it, add it to your lifetime reading bucket list. And I'm keeping this copy forever because I want to be the kind of person who has a book titled SEX AND RAGE on my living room family bookshelf ~ my kids no longer even think twice when they see this one lying around! Loved it.
• 
  M.L. Rio

  Babitz has a way with words and a way with character. This--an odd little novel about a California girl's brushes with money, celebrity, and substance abuse--is supremely clever in its subtlety. Each little climax fizzles out in confusion and disappointment, characters persistently misunderstand each other, and the loose ends are, more often than not, left loose. As fiction goes, it's defiantly realistic in that sense, a testament to the fact that real life often refuses to satisfy the way the movies do. But there's something satisfying in that lack of satisfaction, and the story ends on an optimistic note, stubbornly uncinematic but suggestive of second chances, unlikely and maybe undeserved--a fitting conclusion for a colorful fable of 20th-century survival.
• 
  Matthew Huff

  Deathly dull. Literally nothing happens in this book, and its way too much "telling" with very little "showing." The title of this book is far and away the most interesting part. It was helpful in getting me in the right mood to sleep on a bus though.
• 
  emma

  where was the sex? where was the rage?
• 
  Lara

  This book made me look every thought I was too afraid to admit to myself in the face. It made me want to go outside, meditate, eat healthy and truly live. Live in a way that happens in the natural progression of things when you’re not busy trying to make things exciting.
  
  Easily my fav book ever. Also probably the healthier female equivalent of ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.
• 
  leah

  a fun, short, summery little book about a young woman just living life in 1970s los angeles. it’s quite fun to read if you’re already familiar with eve babitz and her life, because it has a lot of autobiographical moments/details mixed in.
• 
  Thomas

  Los Angeles und New York City spielen die Hauptrolle in dem Roman "Sex & Rage" von Eve Babitz. Der erste Teil in L.A. ist großartig, der zweite Teil in New York zwar immer noch gut, aber im Vergleich doch ein wenig schwächer. Das Buch ist ursprünglich 1979 erschienen. Es wurde erst jetzt zum ersten Mal in deutscher Übersetzung veröffentlicht. Das mag daran liegen, dass es eine sehr amerikanische Erzählung ist. Beschrieben wird das Leben von Menschen, die mit der L.A.-Kunst- und Filmszene verbunden sind.
  
  Es erzählt von Sonne, Meer, Surfen und Partys. Aber auch von Alkohol, Drogen und toxischem Verhalten. Jacaranda wächst als Surferin am Meer in Santa Monica auf. Sie träumt davon, Künstler-Abenteurerin zu werden, die hauptsächlich mit der Farbe Blau malt. Mit achtzehn verliebt sie sich in Colman und zieht zu ihm. Über ihn kommt sie in einen Kreis von Junkies, Schauspielern, Trinkern, Dieben und Jazz-Musikern in West Hollywood. Nach fünf Jahren zieht es Jacaranda zurück zum Meer.
  
  Einer ihrer Freunde wird folgendermaßen charakterisiert: "Sie wusste nur, dass Gilbert Schauspieler war, Marihuana verkaufte und sein Surfboard auf seinem Fernseher lagerte." Das beschreibt Leben und Lebensgefühl dieser Szene kompakt und treffend.
  
  Mit achtundzwanzig schreibt Jacaranda einen Essay übers Surfen, der veröffentlicht wird. Sie wird Schriftstellerin und sieht darin die Legitimation für ihren hohen Alkoholkonsum. Sie kann nicht mehr als drei Stunden am Tag schreiben und irgendwie muss sie ja die restlichen Stunden füllen. Sie bekommt ein Angebot einer Literaturagentin aus New York. Ihr erstes Buch wird verkauft.
  
  Im zweiten Teil reist Jacaranda nach langem Zögern nach New York. Das Treffen mit ihrem Lektor und den anderen im Verlag macht Jacaranda fertig. "Sie fühlte sich, als hätte sie eben noch vor einem Erschießungskommando gestanden, das im letzten Moment seine Meinung geändert hatte."
  
  Anfangs wirkt das Buch beil��ufig erzählt. Doch dann merkt man, dass man in ihm wie in einem Strudel gefangen ist. Aber im Gegensatz dazu ist das nicht unangenehm sondern beglückend, manchmal berauschend. Wenn man passend dazu die Musik einer Laurel Canyon Playlist hört, verstärkt sich dieser angenehme Effekt. Der Sog wird im New York-Teil etwas schwächer. Die letzten Sätze, die Jacarandas Gedanken zu Beginn der Reise zurück nach L.A., zurück zum Meer beschreiben, besitzen wieder die Klasse vom Beginn und sorgen für ein versöhnliches Ende.
• 
  Janet

  A breezy, fun, fast-moving romp through the high life of 1970's Los Angeles by someone who knew it well, this is a reprint of Babitz's 1979 novel--she's very much in on the resurgence these days.
  
  What I like about Babitz is her love of LA, even its squalor. She's not a hater, she's sharp and funny and fully embraces the city's hedonism and surface pleasures, unapologetically sensual, historically savvy, an anthropologist of life in the fast lane at the sea-glittering edge of America. Like all of her books, it's a romp full of dead-accurate insights into a time and a place and a culture which has mostly gone unremarked, exxcept for Joan Didion, who came to it with a critical, rather than an embracing, personality.
  
  I would include Sex and Rage in with such other bounding, keen-eyed novels of the coke-fueled 1970s including Lithium for Medea, Bright Lights, Big City, and Slaves of New York, and maybe Metropolitan Life by Fran Leibowitz as well.
  
  Her speciality is the one sentence portrait, and I especially appreciated her dead-on portraits of her hometown. Here's Jacaranda Leven (a thinly disguised version of Babitz... well known for playing chess, naked, with Marcel Duchamp in the middle of an art gallery) the protagonist, thinking about why she didn't want to go to New York when her book about the decadent crowd she hangs out with, whom she characterizes as being "on the barge," floating from one fashionable spot to the next, is picked up by a New York agent.
  
  "But Jacaranda couldn't face New York. New York had Max in it. She'd be bound to run smack into him just walking down the street. What was so great about L.A. was that you never, ever, ran into anyone by accident..."
  
  What's interesting about the book is her capturing of the pace of that lifestyle, the relentless fun, the drugs and the waves, so much like surfing, a continuous metaphor (when the book opens she's painting surfboards for a living), no time to brood. An uneven book, but the little jewels of the writing and the wit make it a great light read for a dull day.
• 
  McStephanie

  beautiful white girl with beautiful white girl problems. too much drugs, alcohol, sex, celebrity, etc. Babitz's writing is lovely, and she has crafted some interesting characters, but still, I was bored.
• 
  talia ♡

  i mean, i AM a young person and i AM eager for a good time
• 
  Amanda Ventrudo

  not enough sex or rage
• 
  Chris Eells

  I was provided Sex and Rage from Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
  
  Firstly, I thought this was a new book. It's actually a reprint from the late 70's. Secondly, this was a thinly veiled memoir. I had never heard of Eve Babitz before reading Sex and Rage, and now, having done so, can't really understand why people were so fascinated with her. I get the distinct feeling she was like the Kardashians of her time.
  
  I wanted to read Sex and Rage because the blurb spoke of a strong young woman growing up in LA and taking life head on. Instead, what I got was a strong young woman who makes crappy choices, falls head over heels for a group of too rich, too bored socialites who ended up getting her hooked on drugs and alcohol. This, in itself, is not a disqualifier for a good book, in fact it's actually a very good premise for a potentially outstanding book. This though, was not that book.
  
  The book is essentially 3 acts. Young, glowing, full of life 1st act. Rambling, incoherent, stream-of-consciousness 2cnd act... which goes on for way too long. And the 3rd, fairly short, getting my shit together act.
  
  Without providing spoilers, the second act dominates the book and while the blurb talks about an unrequited love... all I can say is, if that was anyone's idea of what love was like in the 60's/70's, no wonder the boomer generation was jacked up
  
  Sorry, maybe the story is dated, though it didn't really feel like it to me, I just couldn't get past how superficial it all was... including for our main character.
• 
  Janelle Janson

  SEX AND RAGE by Eve Babitz - This was the July book club pick for Belletrist - So far I've been so impressed with the thoughtful selections by Belletrist. If you haven't been following, you must go there and follow now!
  
  This book was originally published in 1979 and reissued this year. It centers around Jacaranda Leven (such a cool name), who is a surfer and a writer. She makes unapologetic decisions with such ease it will make you envious. I love that Los Angeles and New York City act as characters and they are portrayed with such honesty. Babitz has such a way with words, it makes me swoon. I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!! It's a timeless read that I plan to revisit again and again. I really had no expectations when I started, other than what I inferred from the really cool title and cover. And by the way, don't judge this book by it's title, SEX AND RAGE, unless you add its subtitle: "ADVICE TO YOUNG LADIES EAGER FOR A GOOD TIME". I think the next one I'll pick up by Babitz is SLOW DAYS, FAST COMPANY. I really want this ride to continue!
• 
  J

  Reading Eve Babitz is like being trapped in the instagram stories of a 20 year old vapidly narrating their daily lives and peppering their stories with "cool" references to art/culture/ music they copied from someone else just to seem interesting.
  
  So tedious and boring. I kept waiting for the story to get interesting or for the character to have some kind of breakthrough, but it never came. "Pleasure for pleasure's sake" ?????? This book was flat and miserable.
• 
  Jim

  Once you've read any of
  Eve Babitz's books, everyone else writing about Southern California seems to be completely missing the point. She knows L.A. well and can write about its deceptive surfaces better than anyone else.
  Sex and Rage.
  
  Babitz's fiction is only slightly more fictional than her non-fiction, probably because her non-fiction also tends toward the fictional.
  
  Unlike most writers who have been sucked into the Hollywood scene, she is at one and the same time observant and literate, which makes her a formidable threat as a California writer. I've read four of her books and continue to enjoy her, especially in her descriptions of the 1960s when she was an internationally known beauty.
• 
  Juliet Plouff

  I hate writing bad reviews for books. I tried so hard to like this book. You know the feeling when you read something, and as soon as you finish you forget what you have just read, and have to reread it? That was me throughout this whole book. I really wish I liked it but it just wasn’t engaging enough for me.
• 
  Hetty

  finished while listening to lana. i feel unwell
• 
  Ida

  Either I’m not as cool as I thought I was or I’ve j spent too much time in the real world to be able to extract anything meaningful from this. Sorry Eve
• 
  Su

  sex & rage is about jacaranda, a young woman drifting through the glamorous, and not so glamorous life of the 70s. she starts out as this free-spirited surfer from LA, one with the waves, can’t start the day without being in the ocean; and slowly turns into someone she herself can’t recognize, can’t define. she has relationships with important men (to society, alas, they are actually pretty unimportant by nature), and she slowly turns to one of the many glittering, sparkling women of the era who are only trying to be for other people. they enjoy her company, when she’s drunk at least, she doesn’t get attached to people (she totally does), she doesn’t care about anything (she totally does), but mainly, she lacks a purpose for all her life. she falls in love with the enigmatic max, who stays a mystery to all of us, and probably to himself as well. sex & rage is the story of a woman who is drifting in life, unable to sit and be by herself for a moment. eve babitz writes with a narrative that can also be described a wave, just as Jacaranda’s life moves as one. unable to control, unable to define, sensual, and spontaneous.
• 
  corinne

  i love eve and her writing style but this one just didn’t hit as well for me in the end, but overall it was pretty okay.